Douglas Garland was arrested Monday and was expected to be charged in the murders of Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents Kathy and Alvin Liknes. Garland remained silent as he was moved into the Calgary Police Service arrest processing.David Moll

Douglas Garland was arrested Monday and was expected to be charged in the murders of Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents Kathy and Alvin Liknes. Garland remained silent as he was moved into the Calgary Police Service arrest processing.David Moll

An Airdrie defence lawyer is raising concerns over how Calgary police publicly paraded murder suspect Douglas Garland in handcuffs through a crush of reporters.

A source confirmed Saturday previous media reports that Garland, accused in the triple murder of five-year-old Nathan O’Brien and his grandparents, is now segregated and on suicide watch in the Calgary Remand Centre.

He was led to an arrest proccessing unit in handcuffs early Monday morning in a heavily publicized walk across the parking lot.

Media were at the event known as a “perp walk” — named for the parading of suspected perpetrators — which lasted one minute and 17 seconds, enough time for a television reporter to pepper Garland with questions he didn’t answer.

“I wish to express my profound revulsion with recent events regarding the arrest processing of Mr. Douglas Garland,” Alan Pearse wrote in a public letter Friday to Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson. He accuses police of intentionally parking far away from the building, of notifying media in advance of the arrest and of staging more officers than needed.

As chair of the policing committee for the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association, Pearse compared the arrest to “putting an arrestee in stock in a public square and letting the public throw rotten vegetables at him. It is intentional public shaming and a humiliation that has no place in a system that respects the presumption of innocence.”

Rob Tripp, a Calgary author who has covered crime across Canada for over two decades, found Garland’s public exposure exceptional.

“Just watching as an interested observer, it seemed Garland is very on-display,” he said. “The fact that reporters had more than a minute to be able to walk next to him and ask questions, that’s a big amount of access for a triple homicide in any jurisdiction.”

Tripp speculates the police service may have hoped for what is known as an excited or spontaneous utterance: a statement a suspect says under pressure that is admissible in a trial.

“It’s essentially hearsay, but hearsay can be admitted under certain instances,” Tripp said. “Under great stress and pressure they can blurt something out that may be admissible in court.”

Tripp says smaller communities often keep arrests as hidden as possible. “Everyone knows everyone, so there’s a greater perceived chance to bias people’s view of an accused person and that person’ right to a fair trial.”

After high-profile cases, Tripp claims, police have told him they showed off suspects because they poured so many resources and overtime hours into the case. “They want to show people the product of all their hard work,” he said. “I think pride plays a big role in this.”

The investigation continued Saturday afternoon, with Calgary police saying they had borrowed a National Research Council plane to search Garland’s Airdrie property over the weekend. NRC planes are normally used for tasks like testing fuel alternatives.

Police were not available for comment Saturday, and declined Friday to comment for a Canadian Press report.

That report quoted Pat Knoll, a University of Calgary law professor, who said perp walks can reassure citizens and lead to additional tips from the public.

“It demonstrates that police are doing their job and apprehending offenders,” Knoll said. “In some instances, although a person may see a photograph or a sketch of a person, when they see them on actual news on television, that can trigger a memory.”

But a day after that report, Pearse told the Herald that Knoll is the only voice he’s heard countering his opinion.

“They shouldn’t be doing things that could compromise a fair trial,” he said. “What happens if they convict the wrong guy?”

Pearse also took aim at the Calgary Police Service’s trend in recent years of not naming officers charged with offences allegedly committed while on duty. “If it’s a CPS officer, they have the ability to hide from the press; they don’t even name the person,” he said.

“In these serious cases, in murder cases, the deck is stacked against the accused person because the police and prosecution have virtually no limit to their resources,” he said. “We want accused person to have the best defence possible, because if convicted they could be locked up for the rest of their life and we want to say they had a fair fight.”

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